Hi Andrew and all the involved,
The idea is great. It will allow programming with a rewording feeling of
depth to the exercise right from the start. However tackling some of the
topics you mentioned, like GA, one first needs to develop new solid
programming techniques that would circumvent Haskell's inbuilt reluctance to
update variables distractively. I would myself wish to read a well
documented study of using ST monad or finite maps to achieve this end.
Perhaps then, your page should openly encourage the need to develop such
"brute force" methods.
Cheers,
-Andrzej